


She Who Followed After

by wordbyrdaber



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 03:32:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4988545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordbyrdaber/pseuds/wordbyrdaber
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fair warning - this tale focuses on an original character.<br/>However, this is sometimes a necessity in regards to new stories and new beginnings.<br/>Lady Winifred Eaves is trapped in a family that does not understand her.<br/>In fact, they're usually too frightened to try.<br/>She has been colorless since the age of twelve. Objects move when she is very upset.<br/>And there is the business of all the color slowly leeching out of the manor house.<br/>When two respectable magicians respond to a call for help, it is clear that she must go with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She Who Followed After

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time playing in Susanna Clarke's world. I am grateful for her creation.  
> Winifred and other original characters are mine. The rest, her's.  
> Thank you for reading, lovelies!

“Ouch!” 

Winifred looked down at the offending page of a novel that had sliced open her index finger. She paused to peer at the curiously curved gash, slowly beading with blood. Squinting, the young woman considered the smear of red that made its way to the thick paper of her book.  
An ugly stain, she thought, on something perfect. 

It was a fault of the low light sputtering from the pure beeswax candle that was mostly spent. The slight yellow glow cast a semi-circle around the corner of the bedroom that Winifred inhabited. The rest of the space throughout was dark, except for the cast of glacial, distant starlight. She froze, and listened to the wind welling up around the large stone estate. It sang a song that she could understand, but the song – she knew – was not meant for her. It was paramount to overhearing a conversation between important peoples. Like generals, like queens and kings and emperors - they were conversations that made her quake. As she concentrated on the howling voices, the pain in her index finger began to ebb and taper to a slight twinge. 

Winifred was ill at ease by this point – voices speaking to beings beyond her field of vision seemed to have that effect on mortals, after all. In the interest of keeping such forces unseen, she felt that it was time to retire her reading for the night. The young woman tossed her novel down onto the table, and with a quick snuff of the wick she jumped across the room. With a resounding “thud” she landed on her feather-bed, and pulled the covers hastily up to her chin. Her eyes searched for shadows of things unseemly things lurking in the beyond, but there was nothing to be found by sight alone. The kind of eeriness that grasped at her throat and puckered her bones had nothing to do with what could be discerned with human senses. There was the presence of other-worldliness that conspired to rob her of quietude. She imagined, as she squeezed her eyes tight shut, that the voices outside her window panes hushed themselves as if there was finally a recognition of her presence…

 

It was like this many nights for the lady Winifred Josephine Eaves, or, as the surrounding families knew her, the Lady Eaves. In less formal circles, she was simply Spinster Eaves. The die that had cast her particular fortune had been an odd set – she was a spinster for a reason, and she had decided that it was best this way.  
At the age of twelve, she had begun to sprout hair that was not befitting the usual kind of young madam from a fine home; grey streaks had begun casting waterfall-like down the tendrils of her very proper brown hair. The color in her common hazel eyes began to drain as if the pupils now sat atop an invisible sieve, and their shade became something akin to the metal that was smelted for the production of bullets. It was clear, said people, that she had been cursed for some particular wrong. In the town which she lived, such things were thought possible. Her mother, who would never cheuse such a fate for her own kin, thought it paramount to tragedy. There was a time when Lady Eaves the elder actively dyed her daughter’s hair in an attempt to minimize her similarities to a walking sheet. The girl was already very pale, and without any natural pigment, her person became a ghastly picture of near-spectral proportions. 

This lasted until the shafts of Winifred’s hair gave up the ghost, and began falling out in clumps. Lady Eaves decided that it was preferable to have a daughter with odd hair than no hair at all. 

It did not help that Winifred spent all of her time with her nose in various news rags, histories, and works of what her Lord father called “nonsense and frippery.” Even less comforting was that during dinners with guests and esteemed visitors to the home, the white-haired spinster was often bold in her conversation, and did not seem beholden to proper social engagement. The Lord and Lady Eaves took to simply leaving Winifred alone, preferring instead to concentrate on her young sister Marianne, the great hope of her family and the beauty who had captured the attention of everyone in the immediate area. At first, it hurt – tall, spindly Winifred with her strange albino facade hid away as her sunny, golden sister was brought out into society. Marianne had strawberry blonde locks that looked very becoming when they’d been arranged just so. Her enviable raiment created a lovely halo around a pale ivory complexion that was accompanied by a small, petite body. Her eyes were a piercing green, and the apples of her cheeks had rosy undertones. Marianne was not a cruel person, but the youngest of the ladies Eaves was not particularly empathetic. While her sister read, Marianne participated in other diversions and was very popular with the other prominent families in Ashcombe. Winifred’s young sister had tried often enough to convince her sister to accompany her on outings, believing that the best cure for societal awkwardness was inclusion that led to a natural sense of normalcy. However, Winifred became wary of the stares and whispers of those around her who might seem empathetic but were often not. She was smart enough to know when she was being humored because of her beautiful sister. 

Winifred’s silver eyes developed a cold spark that told everyone she did not care.

It came to pass that in the year after the dark tower had been spotted in the Yorkshire countryside over Hurtfew Abbey, strange things began to happen in the Eaves household. It was no surprise that everyone suspected it had something to do with Winifred right away. It began with the color in all the household’s china patterns leaving the plates and cups until all the dishes looked like bones with graphite and silver sketches upon them. Then, the tapestries in the great hall started to change. The color started to leech out of them, too – as if they’d been dipped into an acidic snowbank. 

Not long after, Winifred began (unwittingly, at first) to make things move when she was upset. Her parents did their best to ignore the oddities hoping against hope that if they did, Winifred’s peculiarities would lessen. However, Marianne could not help but gossip about the strange goings-ons with all of her acquaintances. Friends and suitors of the youngest Eaves sister came to her home, and visitations to the estate increased tenfold. This made the sun-kissed youngest daughter of the Eaves family even more popular than she’d already been, and it displeased Spinster Eaves a great deal.

 

“It is one thing to be regarded as hopeless,” she told her lady’s maid gloomily.  
“It is quite another to be made a spectacle of.”  
This particular maid – Deliah, by name – loved Winifred dearly, because for all of her coldness to those who did not really know her, the lady was kind to those who did.  
“If only you could use this for your own good, ma’am,” Deliah sighed, piling the silver-white streaks lovingly onto Winifred’s head in various swoops and ringlets.  
“If only they could see your ladyship as someone…you know…dif’rnt, but in a kindly way. I think they could, if you so chuse.”

The words rang in Winifred’s ears, and as the days passed, they made more sense to her. It seemed that she might be one of the many people in England who had found that they were capable of English Magic, though she did not see how she might either call herself a Norrellite, or a Johnanite. She was a woman, and therefore not considered “respectable,” from what the infamous Magician Gilbert Norrell had circulated among society. She had an easier time thinking of magic in terms of what she’d read in various columns and newspapers about the now well-known Johnathan Strange. Even far removed from London proper as she was, word traveled fast – sometimes Marianne’s friends brought lively anecdotes with them on their visits, and after a season spent with this or that family, the youngest Eaves daughter always returned with stories and news about the world beyond that she’d whisper in hushed confidence to her older sister. But now that both Norrell and Strange had disappeared, there was a blight of new information. 

Winifred mourned the loss, and the slight hint that somewhere in the whole wide world, she might belong to someone or something. 

It was hard for Spinster Eaves to see herself clearly in either magician’s imaginings of magic. And, as for Deliah (who came from the same northern country as Norrell,) she always told unbelievable stories about the Raven King and other highly suspect tales of mythical goings-ons. Sometimes she even spoke of the wee people, which Winifred now knew was a reference to fairies…and that was something even Spinster Eaves felt must be dismissed as absurd. 

Still, this legend – this king (John Urkglade? Urkglass? She could not exactly remember) – was perhaps not simply a myth spun from the shadows. But if ravens were black as soot, as coal, as night…then why was she the color of tallow candles and silver? Perhaps it had nothing to do with respectable magic at all. 

 

The real trouble began with Franklin Chatsworth, a land proprietor whose appearance made ladies (and some gentlemen) weep with want. The problem with Chatsworth was that his heart was empty and dark. It loved nothing more than filling its empty chambers up with the sorrow of others.  
By and by, Mr. Chatsworth became a fixture in the Eaves home. He was a particular favorite of Marianne, and was good at a whole range of amusing pastimes to keep himself and other visitors to the estate occupied. He knew all the best drawing room games, and was a capital marksman. His acerbic wit was often seen as harmless and dismissed as good fun. Winifred knew better, and found that her heart jumped whenever she watched Mr. Chatsworth break into a smile that did not reach his knowing blue eyes. Spinster Eaves was usually very good about keeping to herself and hiding effectively when Chatsworth and his kind were about…but one particular late summer evening when a great number of guests were staying in the Eaves’s country house, Marianne entreated her sister to join in a game of Magical Music.

“From what I hear, that is hardly the kind of magic that Lady Eaves prefers,” Chatsworth remarked.  
“Franklin, be kind! My sister will never play if you remain harsh,” the youngest Eaves said, though she grinned while speaking.  
“No matter, it is nearly my bedtime, and I have a novel that I wish to finish,” the spinster said dismissively, knowing that Chatsworth wanted naught to do with the likes of her.  
“Oh, Win! Do stay!” 

At the behest of her sister – especially at hearing the pet name she’d given her sister when they were but children – Winifred sat back down on the horsehair chair nearest the fire. One by one, each of the guests went into the hallway, and everyone left in the adjoining room would select, in hushed tones, a task that each player must guess and complete. The Lady Elizabeth Eddington sat at the pianoforte and played snatches from “Oft in the Stilly Night” which everyone agreed was appropriate. When the player would enter the room, the music would get softer or louder depending on how near someone was to an object they needed to complete their task. Once someone had guessed what they must do, a new participant took their turn. 

Winifred had to admit that it was a wonderful time – her father was made to remove a glove from her mother’s hand. Another young man who was an especial friend of Mr. Chatsworth had to lay down on the floor, and roll about. It was a ridiculous game, but satisfying and simple. 

Then came Winifred’s turn. 

Shyly she exited the room, and was then called back in only a few moments later. The music played, and she found it was very soft no matter where she walked…until she got near to Franklin Chatsworth. She stood still and agog as the music hurdled its way through the room from Lady Eddington’s fingers. Surely there was something on the person of this man she was to retrieve, but she felt that engaging Franklin Chatsworth was paramount to striking an angry snake.  
So she stood – perplexed, and still. Quite unsure of what to do. 

“Oh, she’ll never guess it Chatsworth,” his friend bellowed. Suddenly, Chatsworth leaned down and kissed Winifred on the cheek. It was if an anvil had fallen on her head.  
The action - most inappropriate! - caught her off guard, and all she could do was stand there in dumb silence.  
Then the young man pretended to launch back hurriedly in shock.  
“Why, she’s as cold as she looks!” 

The room erupted in laughter, and Winifred realized that she’d been played a fool. Her head spun, and before she could run back upstairs, she realized that Mr. Chatsworth’s cravat had come untied from around his neck and was, indeed, swaying back and forth like a snake. Lady Elizabeth screamed, and Marianne yelled at her sister to stop the spectacle at once. 

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Winifred said in a low, angry voice.  
“You wanted to see what an improper freak like me could do…”

The cravat was now tightening around Chatsworth’s neck, and the young man dropped to his knees, trying desperately to pry the offending material from his throat. 

“Stop this!” her sister cried, tears forming in her eyes as she ran forward and tried to unwind the material. It was no use, and her small hands tore at the cravat in vain.  
Just as Chatsworth was turning the most remarkable shade of raspberry, Winifred managed to make the cloth-snake stop. All became quiet once more, and after glancing warily around the room where moments before there had been frivolity and fun, Winifred observed the frightened faces that gazed at her with repulsion and horror. 

She fled. 

 

There was talk of locking Winifred in Bedlam immediately after the incident. For her own part, she did not hear these suggestions as much as she guessed at them. The white spinster stayed in her quarters, and took to having her meals brought up to her chamber. Daliah and her mother were the only people alive who were brave enough to come into contact with her immediately after Franklin Chatsworth was nearly strangled to death.  
Her mother insisted that she go into London and see specialists. Winifred balked at the thought – it was bad enough being considered an unusual specimen by the people in the small surrounding villages and country homes. It was quite another to subject herself as something to be poked and prodded by doctors in a crowded city where word of her…peculiarities would travel like fire. 

It was Deliah who acted first, and sent word to her sister Dido. Dido had been in the service of Mr. Norrell before the unpleasantness of last year’s cloud. Though she had never told the Eaves family about this connection, the young lady’s maid felt that something must be done on behalf of her mistress. And that is how Misters John Segundus and Honeyfoot found themselves on the steps of Winifred’s home one late September afternoon. 

 

Spinster Eaves realized something was amiss when visitors arrived that was not there for the soul purpose of entertaining her sister, never mind that the visitors consisted of two gentlemen. At the behest of her rather flustered mother, she had Deliah quickly arrange her into some sort of presentable semblance of being, and then she hurried down the staircase into the large drawing room on the first floor. She hadn’t been downstairs since she’d nearly killed Mr. Chatsworth, and entering into the glaring light of the world outside her room and sanctuary so quickly startled her sensibilities. When she was finally presented to both men, Winifred found her heart was beating rapidly inside her chest. What she’d done would not have been so bad, save for the fact that she hadn’t really been able to control herself. What if a similar scenario played out now? What if she was truly a danger to everyone?

Marianne had immediately been sent away from the estate due to the life-threatening developments, and the possible threat Winifred posed to the beautiful young heiress. There was also fear of scandal by association that Lord and Lady Eaves felt must be avoided. And yet here were two men, here for unknown reasons and seemingly unafraid.  
“Fools,” she thought to herself. “Woe to them if they’re here simply to peer at a curious creature like me.”  
No sooner had Winifred arranged herself in her usual chair near the fireplace than the gentleman known as Mr. Segundus waivered a bit in his standing position, and was helped to sit down by his companion. 

“Are you ill, sir?” Winifred asked pointedly.  
“You should not have come if you were not well – of course, the possible reasons for your visit set the mind to reeling.”  
“It is an old complaint, my lady,” Mr. Segundus managed to breathe, and he smiled weakly at her. Both gentlemen – though kind – gazed in wonder at her.  
She suddenly wished with all her might to give a diversion to her guests beyond her own spectral appearance. 

“I will have tea brought to us. Would that be suitable to your needs, good sirs?”  
They had strong Earl Gray served in ghostly white cups and saucers with only the faint outlines of patterns of the violets and roses that had previously existed on the china. The designs were now little more than spiderweb traces, or footprints on snow. 

“The colour leeched completely from these, and the tapestries are starting to go, too,” she admitted to her guests who regarded her with interest and awe.  
“My lady, we are here to offer you assistance – if you so chuse to privilege us with the chance at lending you aide,” the older man, Honeyfoot, finally managed to spit out warily.  
Winifred kept her face impassibly calm, and took a deep breath.

“What will you, sirs? Are you here with ointments that boast curative powers? Have you tonics to restore my hair’s natural luster? I warn you, the last person who sold us hair dye turned my tresses green. My mother threw an unholy fit, and I confess that I am not certain of their survival.”

At this, the meeker of the two men allowed his eyes to twinkle the tiniest bit as a small smile flickered across his face.  
“No, my lady…we are not here to cure you. We are here to tell you about a place you might come where you would be allowed to…try and understand powers that may be connected to events surrounding English Magic and…yourself.”

Time fell to stillness, and a jolt of clarity traveled through Winifred. She narrowed her eyes at the two gentlemen, squinting thoughtfully through a pair of reading spectacles she had not removed from her nose since she’d been interrupted from her reading only an hour before. 

“What’s this?” she croaked hoarsely, barely aware that she’d spoken.  
“I am cursed. I am touched. I am probably mad. Why want you me?”  
“If you don’t mind me saying, m’lady,” Honeyfoot interjected in the voice Segundus had only heard him use with his daughters, “It is my experience that no one who considers they might be mad truly is.” 

“There are a great number of people like yourself who have begun to experience odd occurrences,” Segundus added. “We have a school – called Starecross – and you might find it an agreeable place to dwell. You might learn in time how to better control whatever enchantments are within you. There are those there who might help you to better understand these things and even benefit from their yewses.”

Winifred, the white spinster and terror of the Eaves family sat stunned and near tears at the sudden arrival of the two men. Blinking back any sign of weakness, she looked straight into the face of John Segundus, and smiled for the first time in weeks.

“This perplexes me greatly - how was it that you choose to come? How did you know I needed…help?”  
Honeyfoot coughed into his fist, and looked to the ceiling, and an odd look came over Mr. Segundus’ face before he settled his expression back into one of gentle concern. 

“A friend,” he managed. “A friend has come to your aide.”  
Silently, Deliah smiled to herself in the shadows - just beyond the threshold of the drawing room door. 

 

The simple truth of the matter was that John Segundus hadn’t had a choice about giving Lady Winifred Eaves entrance into the school at Starecross. One evening, while he and Arabella Strange had been residing near the fireplace in the front room of the grand old house that was the premiere academy for magicians – both practicing and theoretical in nature, a general clamor had fallen upon them in the form of the front hall’s doors being thrown wide open to the chilly night. 

The wild-eyed, blue-marked Viniculus had come charging through. He sang a bawdy drinking song at the top of his lungs, and paid no mind to letting in an icy draft. A ragged man wearily followed behind, the top half of his face hidden under a shabby hat and a large tattered coat falling in shadows around his shoulders. The inhabitants of the building had been stirred from their rest, and various persons had come down the winding staircases of the place to see what the disruption was all about. While the bushy-haired, musically cacophonous vagrant made his way to the kitchens in search of meat pies, his companion stomped heavily through the building to where Mrs. Strange and Segundus sat. The former had become all too accustom to the noisy comings and goings of magicians. She paused thoughtfully to finish a stitch in her hoop before she laid down her most recent project in order to give full attention to the scene before her. Viniculus and John Childermass were not at all as abrupt as her husband had been, though Johnathan was somewhat better kempt. Mr. Segundus still wearily regarded the tall shadow-figure, and though his affection for Childermass had grown, he was always slightly ill at ease around the man. 

Rather brusquely, Childermass removed his hat so as to look full into the faces of Mrs. Strange and Mr. Segundus. He regarded the lady with a kind nod, for everyone respected Arabella and treated her with friendly affection. Childermass, strangely enough, might never let anyone know anything about his inner workings except Arabella Strange, who recieved occasional hints and snatches of stories out of the tight-lipped man without any provocation at all. On this particularly chilly night, his eyes were worried.

“I’ve gotten word from…an old friend that there is someone who needs refuge. You and Honeyfoot should go and give assistance at once. You’ll leave in the morning, and will travel for half a day before you reach the person in question.”  
“What in heaven’s name? Have we become a sanctuary for-”  
“If you haven’t noticed,” Arabella piped airily, “we are a sanctuary of some kind, though for whom and what fluctuates a great deal.”  
“Yes, but what is so damnably urgent that we must go tomorrow?”  
Childermass rolled his eyes in exasperation, pulling forth from his immense coat a letter on flimsy paper.  
Arabella took it from Childermass, and began reading earnestly while John settled his mouth into a thin line.  
“You’ve seen something in your cards, then?”  
“Aye. They fortell danger which can only be thwarted by intervention.”  
“What kind of danger?”  
“Great, I fear.”  
“Yes,” Arabella muttered to herself as she finished the missive.  
“Mr. Segundus, you must go.”  
And with that, the mother of them all had spoken. 

 

Segundus often assured himself that he was immune to great shock. The last decade or so had cured him of that. Dealing as he had with the more peculiar facets of English magic, he was becoming someone far less timid than he had once been. But there were still sights that caused him to get his hackles up, and Lady Winifred had caused him a start. When the tall spectral woman had entered the room he and Mr. Honeyfoot had been deposited in upon arrival at the Eaves estate, he felt that no great explanation of her connexion to magic was needed. 

She was an example of what those in the medical field would call a sufferer of Albinism, though her presence crackled like lightening and caused the magician to swoon from the change of pressure and power in the air. Whatever magic she bore, she did not know how to wield it – that much was evident from her apparent disease. It was as if she had a duplicate shadow which followed her. The problem was, the lady could not see this double and was ill at ease with any hint she had of its existence. As strange and fearful as her very presence was, Segundus was put in mind of gleaming ice and the snowdrifts of his childhood. This was still at the forefront of his mind as Segundus, Honeyfoot, and Lady Eaves clamored into the family carriage two days later. There was much crying about the family name being drug through the muck by Sir Eaves. Winifred’s mother sobbed and waved a lace handkerchief about as if she were warding off flies or demons. Deliah, who would follow her mistress a week later with her necessary belongings, unabashedly grinned from ear to ear. Winifred seemed to return the smile with sparkling eyes, and Segundus found himself grateful that the whole affair had gone off without more trouble. 

The Lord and Lady of the household had not really wanted their eldest daughter causing more havoc, and had determined that a handsome stipend should be sent to the school for the care of their daughter. It was as much or more as they would have paid to have her kept in a house for the mad, but in terms of scandal, it had cost them nearly the same. 

“On to Starecross, then!” Winifred called out in a confident voice upon taking her seat.  
Segundus rubbed his hands together, and found that they were moist – this was a troublesome quality he’d had since youth, and it became especially bad when he was feeling particularly nervous. Honeyfoot gave his companion a knowing look as they pulled away from the estate. They had said, when speaking the evening before about the peculiarities of the school’s new pupil that it was not unlike their experience with Lady Pole. 

“But,” Honeyfoot had whispered, looking around as if he expected the very walls to listen, “she do look like one of THEM, doesn’t she?”  
Remembering this, John Segundus placed his noxiously damp palm over his face, and sighed. He could only imagine how the others would react to Winifred Eaves.


End file.
